Great news for Mitt Romney in the new CNN poll. Sure, he’s down 12 points to Perry, but that’s a big improvement from the last CNN poll, which had him down 13!

But wait, it gets even better. In the last CNN survey, Romney only polled at 14 points. Now he’s up to 18. Where did those points come from? Michelle Bachman, mostly. And now that Tim Pawlenty has joined Team Romney, things will really start to accelerate for the governor as the conservative establishment coalesces behind him. Once Pawlenty’s 2 points get factored in, Perry’s lead should get cut to +10. And from there, Katie bar the door.

Via the Transom, this amazing 2002 New Yorker piece on Rick Rescorla, American Bad Ass:

”Stop crying,” he told her. “I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.”

Stanley Kurtz does the actual research that I couldn’t be bothered with. It’s a great piece and it acquits Perry fully.

The Journal has a great piece about it here. Sample greatness:

The axis of all this angst is Mr. Mankoff, who sifts through between 6,000 and 7,000 entries a week. His assistant uses a computer program to weed out entries that are too common or too long and pares the list to under 100. Mr. Mankoff selects three and readers vote on the winner.

He says his goal isn’t simply to pick the three funniest captions, but ones that represent different approaches, ranging from puns to the more abstract.

Patrick House, a neuroscientist from Stanford University and past winner, says captions that usually prevail fall into what he calls the “theory of mind” category, in which the writer projects the characters’ intent and hints at it, but lets readers fill in the blanks.

He arrived at his theory after what he thought was the perfect pun-based caption was passed over. Out of revenge, he submitted a caption the following week that appealed to the “urban ennui” he assumed afflicts the average New Yorker reader. It won.

The cartoon featured a man on his phone looking out the window, apparently unaware that a monster clung to the wall. To Mr. House, the monster was a metaphor for everything that plagues mankind and the man, a quintessential New Yorker, had given up. “O.K. I’m at the window. To the right? Your right or my right?” he wrote.

My all-time favorite (these things are impossible to find after they run, sorry) featured a giant squid working as a sushi chef.

Update: Galley Friend G.R. has the goods!

Despite the national memorial now emerging in Shanksville, I don’t think America has fully begun to appreciate where Flight 93 fits into the pantheon of great moments in American history. I’d argue that–for a host of reasons–it belongs somewhere in the same neighborhood as Little Round Top and Revere’s ride. It’s fitting that we mourn the World Trade Center and Pentagon dead on 9/11, but properly understood our commemorations every year should start there and build toward reverence and appreciation for the men and women of Flight 93. That field in Pennsylvania, not the hole in Manhattan, should be our enduring symbol of the day.

The Washington Post has a story today about another untold effect of the heroism of Flight 93. In addition to everything else they did, the people who fought in that narrow, terrible aisle saved the lives of Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penny and Col. Marc Sasseville. They were the two F-16 pilots sent on a suicide mission to ram the plane and bring it down. Their story is worth reading in full.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Fucktown. Population: Thor.”

So awesome.

I’d argue that it is (I’ve got a whole section of the America’s One-Child book on this). But reasonable people can certainly debate the sentiment. What has amazed me over the last week or so is the silliness of those who treat the argument as if it’s somehow out of bounds just because Rick Perry is making it. Believe it or not, Rick Perry is not the first person to view Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”

The first person I’ve found drawing the parallel is economist Paul A. Samuelson. In the November 13, 1967 Newsweek Samuelson defended Social Security by pointing out that it was linked to population growth and that “A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised. And that is a fact, not a paradox.” (I found this quote in Phillip Longman’s excellent essay “Missing Children,” in the latest issue of the journal The Family in America. I can’t find the original Newsweek cite to provide full context, but Longman says that Samuelson was defending Social Security and I’m happy to trust him because Phillip Longman is stone-cold awesome.)

Now, Samuelson is not a crank. He won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1970. The New York Times calls him “the foremost academic economist of the 20th century.” If you majored in econ during the last 30 years, there’s a good chance that you used his textbook, Economics.

Nor is Samuelson a conservative. Remember, his likening of the underpinnings of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme were meant as a defense of the institution. And in 2003 he was one of a group of economists to sign a letter inveighing against the Bush tax cuts.

You might argue that the Samuelson/Perry view of Social Security is ultimately incorrect–but you cannot argue that it is troglodytic and beyond the pale. Anyone who does so either misunderstands economics and demography, or is playing an angle.

Update: Ed Driscoll pulls the full original Samuelson quote. As expected, Longman’s characterization was completely accurate:

The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. [italics in original] Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in. And exceed his payments by more than ten times (or five times counting employer payments)!

How is it possible? It stems from the fact that the national product is growing at a compound interest rate and can be expected to do so for as far ahead as the eye cannot see. Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real income going up at 3% per year, the taxable base on which benefits rest is always much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired…

Social Security is squarely based on what has been called the eight wonder of the world — compound interest. A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox.

One of President Obama’s recurring speaking tropes  that “the time for [xyz] is over,” “xyz” always being something bad. For instance, in Detroit earlier this week, Obama said, “The time for Washington games is over.” Washington games being pernicious, QED.

This is a terribly lazy locution. Because it presupposes that, up until a short while ago, it was time for Washington games.

Last month? Good for gaming in Washington. Last Friday night? Play away! But now? Oh no. The window has closed. Time to put those terrible, callow games away.

I wouldn’t make such a big deal about it, but you’ll recall that Obama is the finest writer to occupy the presidency since Lincoln.